Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau at a press conference in Toronto in January 2016

Cole Burston / Bloomberg / Getty

The media love Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (LPC), who won the federal election in October 2015. He is young and handsome, with the emblem of an Indigenous tribe, the Haida, tattooed on his upper arm, and 3.5 million followers on Facebook. The Economist has described him as an ‘example to the world’, E! Online as a ‘smoking-hot syrupy fox’. He features prominently in targeted online advertising for the New York Times which suddenly wants special coverage of Canada.

He combines movie-star appeal with the charisma of Barack Obama and the folksiness of his father, Pierre Trudeau, prime minister 1968-79 and 1980-4. He has posed for photos with Syrian refugees and told an Ottawa mosque audience that Canada is ‘stronger because of the contributions of its Muslim community’. He claims to be a feminist, and committed to the cause of Indigenous Canadians; he is seen as cool, because he is in favour of legalising the recreational use of marijuana, and his name and face feature on packets of Zig-Zag cigarette rolling papers. As with Italy’s former prime minister Matteo Renzi or French presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron, his admirers see him as a 21st-century liberal, the antithesis of his conservative predecessor Stephen Harper, Theresa May or Donald Trump.

As xenophobia sweeps the US and Europe, he declares his love of multiculturalism and diversity. Social media users and regular media have lauded his cabinet, which has gender parity and includes four Sikhs, two Indigenous Canadians, one Muslim and one Jew, though it is also 45% career politicians, 19% private and public sector administrators and 13% lawyers. Trudeau is proud of his team, especially defence minister, Harjkit Sajjan, whom he presented as an example of Canada’s ‘magnificent diversity’.

Sajjan is a Sikh Canadian and a former Vancouver police officer (in 1996 he patented a beard-friendly gas mask) turned intelligence agent. While (...)